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WRITINGS AND TEACHINGS

KENNETH WESTHUES
Professor Emeritus
University of Waterloo, Canada

Updated with quotes for April 2025:

Classic:
The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people that they will have a chance of maltreating someone. Men must be bribed to build up and do good by the offer of an opportunity to hurt and pull down.
— Aldous Huxley, introduction to a new edition of Samuel Butler's Erewhon, 1933.

Direct:
Notwithstanding its less evident basis in biology, the eliminative impulse, the lust to wipe another person out, is like the craving for food or sex. It can consume a person to the point of obsession, spread like a virus through a group, and become the driving force behind collective energy.
— Section on Social Elimination, pp. 24-29 in Envy of Excellence, 2006.

Garden moment for April 2025:

There are more species and colours and cultivars of Passiflora or passionflower than I can count. Most of them, like this crimson variety, thrive in northern Florida and bloom profusely once the weather warms up in spring. Lent is the right season to feature passionflower here.

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Thanks to the Arts Computing Office at the University of Waterloo for hostlng this website from its inception in 2002 until 2014, when it moved to the current, independent URL.